The following essays originated in a session of the Social Science History Association in October, 1976. Two of the participants, Bernard S. Silberman and Alfred J. Rieber, were asked to prepare studies of bureaucracy in Japan and Russia which also dealt with the problems of political power relationships in developing bureaucracies. A third participant, Cyril E. Black, was asked to compare, criticize, and synthesize the first two papers in a third paper of his own. Briefly, the substantive point of these essays as a group is that they deal with the effect of political decisions in achieving certain changes in economic, technical, and military structures and operations. They focus attention on the effects within a complex apparatus set up to administer those political decisions, the state bureaucracy. The essays themselves reveal, and Black’s synthesis details, that the points of similarity between Japan and Russia as they change across time are as numerous and instructive as are the differences. In this introduction, I will call attention to some aspects of these studies which, although technical, are nevertheless important to the research enterprise they represent.

One of the aspects of Japanese political development most puzzling to historians and political scientists is the seemingly rapid pendulum change from bureaucratic oligarchy to parliamentary cabinet to civil-military bureaucratic forms of government in the period between 1868 and 1945. Generally the argument that has been presented at least by Western observers is that, as Japan proceeded through the modernization process, each major stage of that process was reflected in a political transformation. One recent description states:

Most of the major historical interpretations of imperial and Soviet Russia share, at bottom, a common belief that the dominant characteristics of the political system are teleological and dualist, indeed even Manichaean. The purpose of this paper is to suggest an alternative model of politics based on a plurality of groups emerging from the peculiar evolution of the bureaucracy in Imperial Russia. Before taking up the substantive part of the argument, however, I wish to review briefly what I mean by the teleological-dualist interpretation which remains up to the present the reigning orthodoxy in the field.

The papers by Bernard S. Silberman and Alfred J. Rieber raise two categories of problems which interact to illuminate some central issues of comparative social science. One category of issues concerns the relative ability of Japan and Russia in terms of their heritage of political institutions to take advantage of opportunities for development offered by the revolution in science and technology; and the relative capacity of these two countries in this regard as compared both with the earlier-modernizing Western societies and with those in other parts of the world that modernized later. Japan and Russia are one of the pairs of countries that can offer the most fruitful point of departure for wide-ranging comparisons.

To begin on a low-key, disarming note, I emphasize that this paper’s title has two clauses. The second is more important than the first. The first clause reads, “Changing Social Science to Change the World.” The second reads, “A Discussion Paper.” The second clause is more important than the first because it indicates the paper’s primary function. It is primarily designed to serve as a springboard for general and more elevated discussion of a set of topics that I hope interests all or most members of the Social Science History Association, despite their professional membership in different academic disciplines and their engagement in widely diverse fields of research specialization.

One responds to Lee Benson’s conversational gambits with prudence and to his considered formal arguments with great care. If, as in the present circumstance, he is making a “statement,” trepidation is in order. His revolutionary zeal is as formidable as the scholarly understanding which lies behind his advocacy. Moreover, whenever I am tempted to disagree with the manifest content of a Benson argument, I hesitate to express that disagreement because of an experientially based apprehension that I may be totally missing the latent truths that lie within the argument. However, as I recall the SSHA meeting where the presidential address was first presented, I then had the temerity to offer a rather all embracing disagreement with his diagnoses and assessments, if not his prescriptions, where the state of the health of the social sciences is concerned. Emboldened by the realization that I am on record with a public demurral, I will now proceed to restate the nature of my disagreement.